Area5Xp

Thank you for standing by for this important message.

As Base Commander I would like the extend a hearty Happy New Year to all of you (yes, all three people out there in the Blogosphere who even know this place exists) from all of us here at the base.

As your commander, this year looks like I'll be able to issue more orders and be a little bit more informative this year. Hopefully, with this being an election year there will be PLENTY of orders or decrees to proclaim or issue.

Have fun out there people! That's an order!!!!!

ThatIsAll(tm)(or something like that)

I'm sure most of you are awway of the recent blevy of lawsuits that the RIAA has filed against us common folk in the hopes of killing the MP3 download industry. Well, now it seems that these folks are coming after us again for ripping CDs to our hard drives.

See this article from PCMag contributing editor John C. Dvorak.

Suing customers for ripping CDs is an attack against fair use that, if successful, would reverse legal precedents and give some momentum to the slow effort to eliminate all consumer recording devices. This would include VCRs, CD burners, DVD burners, DVRs, and even copying machines.

And there goes everything that those in the tech industry as near and dear......

Not too mention that if we allow this sort of industrialized police action to continue unabated (like the RIAA is hoping for), then the next thing they'll start coming after is the Bill of Rights. The "connect the dots" path is patently clear, at least it is here on the base. Don't believe us, then sit there and do nothing but when Big Brother comes knocking at your door...don't say you haven't been warned.

Instead of finding some way to benefit from easy copying, these two associations and the companies they represent honestly believe that clogging the American legal system with John Doe nuisance lawsuits will somehow put an end to piracy—

Nope, all it does is clog our already stretched to the limit court system with patently frivilous lawsuits. Where is the reform that the Congresscritters said was coming????

Obviously teh folks at RIAA and MPAA need a few more lessons in history. For as long as there has been a need for something that a large population of people want, there has always been the subculture of piracy. Lawsuits AIN'T gonna change that, in fact it's problab y going to make the piracy market florish even further. it'll just go a little bit further underground.

These folks clearly are mad with power and greed and obviously need more to satiate their thirst. Pity they are too near-sighted to see their own misfortune.

WTF??????

This article from Fox News is enough to get my blood boiling.

But then again, considering it's Sandy "Queen of the Pinkos" Newsome's Franquacko then this all makes more sense. In a city where ANYTHING is valued higher than a human, I guess I should have expected this sort of display.

Oh my aching back...........

Just informed by the Technical Staff that the software used by the base Early Warning Systems has completed the latest minor upgrade. There shouldn't be any issues noticed on this end, or so they tell me.

Stand by for more.

I had almost forgot about this birthday, but luckily the folks over at the American Thinker were gracious enough to post this reminder so that all of us will remember to properly celebrate this momentious occassion.

On Sunday, January 27, 2008, our nation celebrates an important political anniversary. Ten years ago Hillary Clinton (then the First Lady) went on television with Matt Lauer and said:

"This is the great story here for anybody willing to find and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president."

Talk about a birthday that DESERVES the National Holiday designation!!!! Please contact your local, state, and federal congresscritter(s) and make your voice heard.

What is the VRWC? It is the heart, soul and minds of millions of muzzled Americans speaking freely after the muzzle has been removed. It is the communion of these millions across lines of religion, race, gender and age who are bound by a common notion of what the American dream really means. The VRWC, unlike the monolith of Leftism, does not march in lockstep but rather as free souls brought together by the values of truth and decency. Happy tenth birthday, fellow members of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy!

Well said. Very well said.

{clap clap clap}

{standing ovation}

Thatisall^TM

For true sci-fi fans, any mention of a real-world rail gun will draw an instant, slightly audible gasp.

{slightly audible gasp}

That's the news that Miltary.com is reporting in this article from earlier this month.

The Marines, in particular, are interested in the potential for rail guns to deliver supporting fire from up to 220 miles away -- around 10 times further than standard ship-mounted cannons -- with rounds landing more quickly and with less advance warning than a volley of Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Looks like it's time to get on the horn to the Naval Warfare Center and see about getting one of these babies for the base. Talk about a serious "anti-aircraft" weapon!!!!!!

...but providing 3 million amps of power per shot has been a limitation. At 32 megajoules, this new system appears to be the most powerful rail gun ever built...

THREE MILLION AMPS PER ROUND???

Looks like the Science Department guys are gonna need to build a bigger matter/anti-matter converter sooner than they originally thoguht. That or else we're going to have to "acquire" a certain little "Mr. Fusion" unit off of a certain DeLorean. Since that gem can provide the 1.21 jiggawatts of power for a time-machine, then three million amps should be a piece of cake.

More info DEFINITELY to come.

Just when you thought it was safe to troll in the WWW waters with Firefox, comes this article on TechRepublic about a new flaw that has the potential to cause problems reminiscent of IE.

Window Snyder, Mozilla’s chief of security confirmed a data leak vulnerability in Firefox’s directory traversal mechanism. The flaw has been graded as a low-risker and was brought to light as a proof of concept.

Wait, what?? (and Mozilla's main security guru has a first name of "Window"??????)

When a “flat” add-on is present, an extension which stores its information within Javascript files as opposed to .jar files, an attacker exploiting this flaw may be able to retrieve data or profile a compromised system. Extensions such as Greasemonkey and Download Statusbar may be affected.

Sounds rather IE-ish to me. At least they say it's a low risk flaw.....

Check the TechRepublic article for links to the full report.

Return radar screens to normal scanning mode.

The folks in the Technical Department have informed me that the additional updates that they have been working on have been completed and are ready for real world use.

These updates were primarily back-side upgrades and as before there should not be any problems noticed on the front-side.

Standyby for more.

This one is too good to pass up and not post 

Three men - a Canadian farmer, Osama bin Laden and a Texan are all working together one day.  They come across a lantern and a Genie pops out of it.  'I will give each on you one wish, which is three wishes in total', says the Genie.

The Canadian says, 'I am a farmer and my son will also farm.  I want the land to be forever fertile in Canada .'  POOF! With the blink of the Genie's eye, the land in Canada was forever fertile for farming.

Osama was amazed, so he said, 'I want a wall around Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq and Iran so that no infidels, Americans or Canadians can come in our precious land.'  POOF! Again, with the blink of the Genie's eye, there was a huge wall around those countries.

The Texan says, 'I am very curious. Please tell me more about this wall.'  The Genie explains, 'Well, it's about 5,000 feet high, 500 feet thick and completely surrounds the countries. Nothing can get in or out; it's virtually impenetrable.

The Texan sits down, cracks a beer, smiles, and says, 'Fill it with water.'

This one certainly passess all tests when it comes to the Truth in Advertising Act!!!

So some frozen brain Demonscum has this idea that  that he wants the whole town to approve.  This one should die a quick death.

Brattleboro residents will vote at town meeting on whether President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should be indicted and arrested for war crimes, perjury or obstruction of justice if they ever step foot in Vermont.

What in the name of sanity??  I knew the frozen brain part was true (the byline is out of Vermont no less), but this nutcase needs to be immediately escorted to Arkham Asylum.

Kurt Daims, 54, of Brattleboro, the organizer of the petition drive, said Friday the debate to get the issue on the ballot was a good one. Opposition to the vote focused on whether the town had any power to endorse the matter.

Uhhh, burly, bouncer-type boys in white, please detain Kurt and promptly escort him and any other nutcases spouting off like garbage to the Maximum Security Wing of Arkham.  Use of glow rods is permitted, and indeed REQUESTED.  And IF the town council should happen to approve this lunacy, they also should be handled in a non-polite manner to Arkham as well.

Daims said the most grievous crime committed by Bush and Cheney was perjury — lying to Congress and U.S. citizens about the basis of a war in Iraq.

Hey Kurt, get your information from a source other than the Lapdog Whacko Media outlet that you goobers in the Demonscum party call "reliable".  Oh not to mention, some of us reasonably intelligent, free thinking folks here in "Flyover County" would call what you're attempting T-R-E-A-S-O-N.  Which is still punishable by death.

Warm up the capacitors boys.  We're gonna get a couple of real winners here soon!!!

The article asked the town attorney to "draft indictments against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for crimes against our Constitution and publish said indictments for consideration by other authorities."

And that there buddy can be interpretted as "inciting a riot" which is also punishable under the U.S. Penal Code.  Do not pass GO, do not collect $200.  But do enjoy this nice consolation prize.  A free, eight hour session of getting your balls TASERED!!!!!!!!!!!!!

God Bless the folks over at Cisco.  Their new "Nexus 7000" data center switch certainly appears to be able to bring about the end to the aggravating beast known as "network congestion".  If this article turns out to be true, then bye bye congestion.

Cisco Systems Inc. introduced on Monday a new data-center switch that the company says can copy all the searchable data on the Internet in less than eight minutes, or run 5 million concurrent high-quality videoconferences between New York and San Francisco.

See what I mean??

If you think those numbers are crazy, look at these:

Cisco says that the new data-center switch would be able to copy all the searchable data on the Internet in 7.5 minutes, download Wikipedia's database in 10 milliseconds or download 90,000 Netflix movies in less than 40 seconds. It also can run 5 million concurrent transcontinental videoconferences using the company's Telepresence Collaboration systems, a company spokeswoman said.

I WANT that sort of power in my house....NOW!!!  But I'm afraid I'd have to get the 100Mbps fiber optic service that Verizon offers to even think about having a switch like that to use.  None the less though, ISPs need to seriously consider getting this switch when it is released later this year.

Dismissed^TM

Given that the Stephenville UFO story isn't going away......I have been given permission by my superiors to make the following statement:

Sorry, it was us....we did it

The latest conjecture is that the Air Force and McDonnell Douglas' "SkunkWorks" are flight testing the next generation replacement for the U-2 or even the next stealth bomber to replace the B-2.  As noted in the article linked above, Trisha Choate from the Abilene Reporternews continues with this:

"For national security reasons, of course, they're disinclined to tell us about it," said Michael Shermer, executive director of the Skeptics Society and editor of Skeptic magazine.

Yes, I am aware of the implications that the above statement is NOT earth-shattering news.  But what is news is that a skeptic is ACTUALLY pointing out a known FACT.

Among the possibilities: The government is conducting a campaign of disinformation, spreading UFO stories to cover up the truth, which is out there.

Paging FBI Agent Mulder, Agent Fox Mulder.  White Courtesy phone.

In an about-face, the military said 10 F-16s from the 301st Fighter Wing at Naval Air Station Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base were on a training mission Jan. 8 in an area including Erath County.

Maj. Carl Lewis, a fighter wing spokesman, said it was just a mistake when he first told reporters the base had no planes in the sky that day.

I will say this one more time. 

Sorry, it was us...we did it.

Dismissed^TM

As we mentioned one wee ago in this post, FOXNews is reporting on their website that the Navy has released photos and a few details of one of the first tests of the new rail gun.

In the demonstration Thursday, engineers fired the electromagnetic railgun at what they said was a record power level: 10 megajoules.

Good job boys, that's at 31.25% of full capacity.  Time to go full power!!!!

On the bright side, here is a video of the test firing.

More news on this when it's available.

Here's a quick rundown of this busy day:

•  Guiliani out
•  The Breck Boy is too
•  The Federal Reserve Board cut the Prime Interest rate by another amount that' still going to kill the economy.
•  75% of us have got the clue...it's the economy stoopid!!!
•  The 20 million illegal aliens in the U.S. just COULD be eligible for the tax rebate.  {You've GOT to be kidding}
•  Hitlary's hometown rag endorses the other guy.  But Hitlary DID get the endorsement of the all-important Black Elvis voting segment.

And finally:

•  Some Tennessee legislator want to ban the "Girls Gone Wild" TV ads.  Again.  Wait, WHAT???

Dismissed^TM